Review: Extinction (Jurassic Predators)

Ever since Jurassic World was announced, a great many other dinosaur movies followed suit. The straight to DVD market in particular became quite saturated in the wake of Colin Trevorrow’s blockbuster. Unfortunately for the dinosaur sub-genre of creature features, it can be quite hard for low budget dino-movies to get noticed when they don’t have the resources to make convincing looking on-screen beasties.

In order to stand out from the herd, Extinction: Jurassic Predators, a 2015 British produced effort, has attempted to shake things up (both literally and figuratively) by adding the ‘found footage’ angle to proceedings. Unfortunately for those involved in the making of Extinction, they were beaten to the punch by 2012’s The Dinosaur Project. However, The Dinosaur Project was a fairly poor film overall, leaving the door wide open (insert joke about Velociraptor door opening shenanigans here) for Extinction: Jurassic Predators to stroll on in and claim the title of ‘best found footage dinosaur film ever made’ – if only it could take the opportunity.

Our story finds a team of intrepid scientists and documentary filmmakers on an expedition to deepest darkest Peru in search of new species and cultures. What they find, however, is not a family of charming Paddington Bears, but a group of tyrannosaurs (while no official terminology for a group of tyrannosaurs exists – a murder has a certain ring to it) who, as tyrannosaurs tend to do when they are depicted on screen, proceed to terrorise and eat people. Or rather, they do so eventually. For you see, nothing of note happens in the first 55 minutes of Extinction: Jurassic Predators – which is more than half of the film’s entire running time.

Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with a nice bit of build up time. After all, a film is a much more engaging experience when you’ve had a chance to get to know the characters somewhat before they get torn asunder by prehistoric monsters. It worked quite well in Peter Jackson’s King Kong, where the great ape didn’t show up until a full hour of screen time had passed. Unfortunately for Extinction: Jurassic Predators though, the characters here are not worth getting attached to. The entire ensemble seems to be in some sort of perverse competition to see who can be the most unlikable (a game where nobody wins – not least the audience).

It would be easy to say that the actors were not up to scratch in Extinction: Jurassic Predators, but they are hardly the ones to blame here. It is the atrocious scripting which lets the film down. One character insists that the group sticks around to bury their fallen comrades after being attacked and eaten by a pack of tyrannosaurs(burying the dinosaurs’ poo perhaps?) while another decides that he simply must continue to videotape the tyrannosaurs in order to prove their existence, despite having already secured ample amounts of clear footage of them already. Such extreme levels of idiocy make it very hard to relate to the characters of Extinction (If you found their actions to be reasonable then I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you…). It is impossible not to root for the dinosaurs to show up and mercilessly devour them all.

When the dinosaurs do finally arrive, their appearance is quite a big let down. The puppetry effects on display are far from convincing – the bulk of which is made up of the kind of dinosaur costume which is effective when it comes to scaring small children down at the mall but precious little else. While certain dinosaur films can be criticised for going overboard with tacky computer generated imagery, bad puppets are not the way forward either. To compound the overall cheap look of the film, it is shot on location in the Welsh countryside, which looks absolutely nothing like the lush Amazonian rainforest which it is meant to represent. The planting of critters acquired from the local pet shop in strategic locations does little to hide the fact that the film looks nothing like what it is supposed to (Indeed, the dinosaurs depicted on the Extinction: Jurassic Predators DVD box and promotional images look nothing like the ones seen in the film either), nor does the shaky ‘found footage’ camera/editing style. IMDB lists the film’s budget as being north of $3 million. What we see in the finished product looks and feels closer to about $3k.

Extinction: Jurassic Predators‘ positive points are few and far between. The actor who plays the cameraman (Daniel Caren) does a fairly good job of channeling his inner Karl Pilkington, but his schtick does wear thin after a while. There is also one wry scene which is lifted from Michael Crichton’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park novel which will no doubt raise a smirk from dedicated consumers of dinosaur media.

All things considered though, Extinction: Jurassic Predators is a very poor effort and manages to to be an even worse found footage dinosaur film than The Dinosaur Project – a feat which is impressive in its incompetence!

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About The Author

Sean is Geek Ireland's resident dinosaur enthusiast, having been fascinated by prehistory since a time before he could read, speak or stand in an upright position (he still struggles to do at least one of these things on a daily basis).
Known as one of the biggest dinosaur fans Ireland has ever produced, Sean has delivered talks on his favourite subject at many venues and events including the Irish Film Institute, the UCD Science Expression Festival, Tayto Park, Dublin Comic Con and even London's Comedy Store.

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RAID 2018 is a gaming event, by gamers, for gamers. Offering BYOC LAN tournaments, video game concerts, talks from industry professionals and much more, we're banking on this being the best

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RAID 2018 is a gaming event, by gamers, for gamers. Offering BYOC LAN tournaments, video game concerts, talks from industry professionals and much more, we’re banking on this being the best gaming event in Ireland during 2018!